Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/147

 ten princes, and recently the Tokugawas entertained him with a fencing-match and a No dance in old style, the costumes and masks for which had been used at Tokugawa fêtes for centuries. In accordance with other old customs, a sword by a famous maker was presented to the guest of honor, and a commemorative poem offered in a gold lacquer box. Yet the head of the Tokugawa house is a grandson of the Shogun who first refused to treat with Commodore Perry, and son of Keiki, the arch rebel and last of the Shoguns, who for so long lived forgotten as a private citizen on a small estate near Shidzuoka, keeping alive no faction, awaking no interest—attaining, in fact, a political Nirvana.

Under new titles the old fiefs are lost sight of and old associations broken up. The marquises, counts, and barons of to-day are slender, dapper little men, wearing the smartest and most irreproachable London clothes, able to converse in one or two foreign languages on the subjects that interest cosmopolitans of their rank in other empires, and are with difficulty identified with their feudal titles. The Daimio of Kaga has become the Marquis Maeda, his sister married the Emperor’s cousin, and the great yashiki of their ancestors has given way to the buildings of the Imperial University. The Daimio of Satsuma is now Prince Shimadzu. It is not easy to associate these modern men-about-town, who dance at state balls, who play billiards and read the files of foreign newspapers at the Rokumeikwan, who pay afternoon calls, attend teas, garden-parties, dinners, concerts, and races; who have taken up poker and tennis with equal ardor, and are victimized at charity fairs and bazaars, with their pompous, stately, two-sworded, brocade and buckram bound ancestors.

There are great beauties, favorites, and social leaders among the ladies of the court circle, and the change in their social position and personal importance is 131